fieldguides

Negotiating legacies of contract labour / Namibia / Compounded : Navigating legacies of contract labour emerges as a research project from the pressing presence of two albums left to me by my father, JF Morris. The first is a record of architectural works compiled by him between 1958 and 1960 when he was working in Walvis Bay, Namibia, as one of the architects of the Municipal Compound designed to house 6000 men from the north who were contracted through the colonial … Read More

Polyvocal Reading of Fieldguide vol 1 with Orlando Preternaturalist, Nadia Kamies and Ten Voices at ESALA / Adam House Basement Theatre /  Edinburgh / December 3, 2024

A gathering around Fieldguide #1, UNPICK, RESTITCH – Doilies, Medorahs, Labouring Plants by Nadia Kamies. UNPICK, RESTITCH narrates an archive of the ordinary. It insists on story-telling as method. There are family photographs, hand-crocheted doilies and medorahs – Nadia’s grandmothers’ craftwork – rituals and traditions. There is the Rose of Jericho or Flower of Maryam, a plant that emerges as an analogy for midwives, birth and labour, travelling and displacement, rebirth and resurrection, with deep connections to disempowered voices throughout … Read More

A three-day gathering in Kamiesberg/Namaqualand. We started the gathering on the first day with a joint reading in Paulshoek of Fieldguide #3 – There Listening: Plant Perspectives on Healing and Power/’n Plant se Perspektiewe van Krag en Genesing, written by Joshua B Cohen and Johanna ‘Marianna’ Lot. Each participant wore a pocket with stitched plant names in Afrikaans, Dutch and Nama that appear in the text of the Fieldguide. Participants of the reading/gathering in Paulshoek were Cornelius Brand, Willem Brand, … Read More

Deep Histories Fragile Memories, in collaboration with Cape Town Museum, invite you to Strain Against the Archives, a Fieldguide Gathering & Polyvocal Reading with Ten Voices
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In April deep histories fragile memories are organizing two sets of Gatherings in South Africa in collaboration with the authors of the Fieldguides.
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An ambulatory library of ten chapbooks that mark a return from Cape Town to Angola. Volumes 1-3 (2022) mark the first leg, from a shrine on Signal Hill to a village in the Kamiesberg, Namaqualand. The guides are Nadia Kamies, Rachel O’Donnell, Joshua Cohen and Johanna Lot. Volumes 4-6 (2023) will narrate the second leg of the return through Namibia from Walvis Bay to Rundu. Volumes 7-10 (2024) will follow the journey through Angola to the port of Luanda. Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist is designed to bring … Read More

A Reading with the Bodies in the medicinal garden of ‘t Gasthuys. On March 25 the Bodies gathered at the ancient medicinal garden of the museum ‘t Gasthuys, Aalst, for a reading-as-rehearsal of Rachel O’Donnell’s essay Apacina: a Contemporary Herbal and Ambiguous Tale, soon to be published in the series Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist. Readers were Pieternel Vermoortel, Brunilda Pali, Vanessa Müller, Lucile Desamory, Nele Möller and Wendy Morris. The event was a part of the Bodies project of Netwerk Aalst. The Fieldguides … Read More

Suspended between the mundane and the miraculous. The Fieldguides are an upcoming publication series of single-essay chapbooks. They are a deep histories fragile memories collaboration with the Berlin publisher K Verlag, kunsthal Netwerk Aalst, and LUCA. The fieldguides are funded in the first year as a start-up project by LUCAbreakout. The first three issues will appear in 2022. Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist are word-of-mouth essays, published as small chapbooks, to be read at gatherings of collaborators and audiences brought together … Read More